Our server will serve several web pages and applications developed in various programming languages, such as PHP, Python, Ruby (on Rails). Currently, we have one Python application, which is using Flask framework.

If you are using e-book readers, changing meta information in PDF files might be useful. The PDF Toolkit has powerful capabilities that includes updating PDF metadata. Even though pdftk is a command line application and does not have editing feature, updating is a really simple process. All you have to do is, extract current metadata into a text file, edit it, and update the PDF file!

Hi, I’ve started working on Pardus linux distribution as an intern last week. This post is the summary of the first week at the office…

I’ve been supporting Pardus for almost 6 years and being volunteer at the events occasionally. I’ve met most of the developers during these events. However, I had a great opportunity to met the ones who I haven’t met before and the other interns at the meeting in first day.

Other four days of the week, Pardus developers organized some workshops which are useful for interns in these subjects: Python, vi, ÇOMAR, PiSi, Qt, Linux kernel, testing and debugging… We had enough time to practice too.

I have an active developer application request, and I have plans for Package Manager. Since I’m in the same office with its developer, we had chance to brainstorm. Gökmen has also requested me to make some improvements in package details window. That window contains a web page and making improvements is a piece of cake!

While other interns practice what we’ve learned from workshops, I worked on improvements for the details web page. For development, I preferred nginx web server which I use a lot recently. However, I had to make some changes in php package to be able to use it with nginx. I needed to enable FastCGI support, and I had to update libc-client package to do that. After these changes, I’ve managed to build a new php package with php-fpm patch! 😀

Recently, I changed static rating stars with jQuery and Raty plug-in. I’ve also created a new php class to help me with working SQLite database that holds the rating data. It’s almost finished, I just need to implement a log in system for package ratings.

This week on Monday, it became official that my internship project is “improvements on package manager”. Sexy screenshots are coming soon!

My roommate has an old computer that belongs to one of his relatives: Compaq Armada 110. It’s operating system was, Windows ME and since he is going to return it after few months we are not supposed to change it. However, he is in love with Linux, and it is really hard to find proper software for daily needs (browsing web, watching movies, reading/editing documents) which runs on Windows ME.

Backing up

We decided to create image of the harddrive, install Linux, and restore image before returning it back. I created disk image with dd command:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/externaldisk/backup.img

It took a while, (about 3 hours) so be patient. After we backed up the hard drive, we are free to be “free” 🙂

Verifying backup image

But, I wanted to be sure about the backup is not corrupt. I wanted to try it on a virtual machine using VirtualBox. First, I thought I can run a live Linux, and use dd command to restore it back to an empty virtual drive. But then, I remembered that I’ve read something about converting image files to virtual drives. I searched on Google (you should try, it is amazing!), and reached the command within seconds.

Virtual machine booted up successfully, automatically installed drivers for virtual hardware (except graphics driver). But I didn’t matter for me, because I’m going to restore image to the same computer again, and a successful boot up was all I need to see.

Now, the distro!

Since Armada 110 is ten years old, performance is important. So we had to choose a light desktop environment, like XFCE. xubuntu would be the best choice. I wanted to try latest version (11.04), and started installing. It took 40 minutes, and after a restart, it was ready. Performance? It was too much higher than my expectations.

We already know that is not a valid layout. Because a block element (div) is used in an inline element. If I change layout, a have to insert hyperlink tags (a) in all block elements, and the background of the “first” div element will not be clickable. So here comes the solution:Continue reading “How to Create Hyperlink DIV Elements”